Chef Dez on cooking

By Chef Dez | May 20, 2009

Mushrooms: not your ordinary plant or vegetable

One of the most unique foods that we consume on a regular basis is mushrooms. Unlike any ordinary vegetable or plant, mushrooms are actually members of the fungus family. They are produced from spores rather than seeds, and therefore lack the familiar plant traits of leaves, flowers, and roots.

During the development of normal plants, nutrition is absorbed by not only the roots system, but also by the presence of chlorophyll in the green leaves and stems. Mushrooms on the other hand must find other ways to derive nutrition to aid in their maturation. In order to do this, they adhere themselves to different organic matters and feed on the nutritional elements that are naturally found there.

Chef Dez is a newspaper food columnist published in over 50 communities across Canada and Washington state. He is the author of two cookbooks, a live cooking show performer, and a cooking class instructor at six locations in British Columbia.

His has a bigger than life passion, for both food and people, and his column is the ultimate guide to bringing the culinary world alive in your home.